Trend of broken labour contracts to be curtailed

HÀ NỘI (VNS) –– Enterprises with more than five per cent of their Vietnamese interns in Japan breaking their contracts will be stopped from bringing more interns to this country.

This was announced in the official dispatch No. 1123/LDTBXH-QLLDNN sent by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) to enterprises that export labour.

Accordingly, enterprises must report their rate of interns breaking contracts in Japan to MoLISA every six months. If the rate exceeds five per cent, they must stop exporting labour to the country until the rate drops below five per cent.

The announcement also demands that the labour export enterprises follow regulations on training and working time, salaries and management fees and ensure the labourers’ spending capacity and living conditions are adequate.

Labourers in Japan are not allowed to work for more than eight hours per day and 40 hours per week.

Besides this, rent deductions from the employees’ salaries should not surpass 20,000 Japanese Yen (US$183) per person per month or 30,000 Japanese Yen ($275) per person per month for those living in big cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Magoya.

Other regulated fees are not allowed to exceed $3,600 per person on a three-year contract or $1,200 per person on a one-year contract.

In addition, enterprises are only allowed to collect from labourers VNĐ5.9 million ($265) in fees for a course on the Japanese language, which is equivalent to some 520 lessons.

In particular, enterprises are allowed to recruit and train interns only after their contract to bring labourers to Japan becomes effective and when Japanese firms are ready to welcome these workers.

There are 73 Vietnamese enterprises taking interns to Japan, which is one of the three markets that have the most Vietnamese labourers because of the attractive salaries.

In 2015, Việt Nam exported 27,000 labourers to Japan, accounting for 23.2 per cent of the total exported workers for the year, an increase of 136.6 per cent compared with 2014.